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→Early Forms of Socialism?
While modern groups often do show limited differences in classes and even sexes in cases, it is not clear how prevalent this was in the past. Nevertheless, few hunter gatherer groups have been found to have direct evidence where a person would have greater authority or access to resources. One argument is that agriculture likely created the circumstances for inequality to emerge more easily. In this case, with agriculture, the ability to raise resources through the land is not equal. This could be because not all land is equal in productivity and some simply may be better. Once specific individuals were able to accrue more resources than this opened the possibility for socially unequal societies to emerge.
One possibility is that, although agricultural societies may have fostered greater inequality, a type of egalitarian and, even a form of socialist societies, did exist in a type of "vertical egalitarianism." In these cases, kinship and social networks were likely not equal for these communities, which were often larger as they utilized agriculture. However, on the surface, there may have been limited power or no real differences in power between family heads. Wealth may have been similar among families. In essence, such societies display hierarchy, in that not all members are the same and power is unequal; however, authority would be limited in that no central leader or wealthier individuals can easily emerge. What could have limited power for any central authority is that population was still relatively limited and larger groups may divide or fission.
==Later Developments in Socialism==
